The Seahawks were almost named the Mariners in 1975

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The Seahawks name was announced on June 17, 1975 after a fan contest soliciting name suggestions. Mariners was one of the five finalists, but a telephone call between team owners and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle helped select the name Seahawks. (seattlepi.com file)

How did our team get to be known as the Seahawks?

The story is an interesting one, and few realize that our professional football team was almost called the Mariners. (Our baseball team didn’t have its first game until 1977, a year after the Seahawks’ first game.)

And the NFL franchise wasn’t even the first Seattle sports team named Seahawks. The city’s hockey team that played here from 1934 to 40 was the first, and they were one of 11 different hockey teams in Seattle, going back to 1914.

The Seahawks NFL story starts back in summer 1975, the year before the team’s first game. An ownership group called Seattle Professional Football had been formed to bring a franchise to the city and one was awarded to Seattle in summer 1974. The group then asked for fan submissions on the team’s name.

Before Blitz, the Seahawks had this mascot. This picture is from the 1979 season. (seattlepi.com file)

They received 20,365 entries suggesting 1,741 names – and 151 of them wanted the Seahawks, which already was the mascot of Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle, Peninsula High near Gig Harbor, and Anacortes High. Five colleges or junior colleges also were called the Seahawks.

Along with Seahawks, the SPF group had four other finalists: Mariners, Evergreens, Olympics and Sockeyes.

Rozelle and Kensil both liked Seahawks, “and that helped us to make up our minds,” majority owner Lloyd Nordstrom told the P-I in 1975.

He, co-owner Herman Sarkowsky, and team general manager John Thompson voted, and the Seahawks name won two to one, according to Nordstrom’s account. But he kept quiet on how each voted and what the runner-up name was.

The owners then put the 151 Seahawks suggestions into a huge bowl with green tags and picked Hazel Cooke of Milton as the official name contest winner. Her prize was two 1976 season tickets.

“I submitted four entries, one in my name and one in each of my three boys’ names,” Cooke told the P-I in 1975. Her other name suggestions? Studs, Cruisers and Sabers. (Tacoma was already home to an amateur baseball team, the Cheney Studs.)

The others who picked the Seahawks were said to have received a framed certificate noting their contribution.

Cooke was surprised she’d won. Not only had she never seen a professional football game, she said the only thing she’d previously won was “a 1960 drawing in Puyallup.”

Team owners, who announced the name on June 17, 1975, said they had no doubt of the name when they saw the Seahawks’ helmet prototype, silver with the green and blue Seahawks logo. Owners thought the silver would reflect well on the indoor lights of the Kingdome, which also hadn’t been finished at that point.

There was another short-lived professional football team called the Seahawks, according to the P-I archives. That was Miami of the All-American Conference, an alignment which lasted from 1946 to 1949 before all but two teams (the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers) were put out of business by the NFL.

Last summer, the Seahawks listed some of the other rejected names on their website, including the Aardvarks, the Abominable Snowmen and the Bumbershoots. A gallery of those rejected names is below.

Nordstrom said in 1975 that the owners’ group was happy with the Seahawks name because it was indigenous to the area and aggressive.

“I submitted Seahawks because it’s alliterative with Seattle,” Cooke, the official name-winner, told the P-I. “And a hawk is proud, bold, fierce. I hope the team will be such.”